ॐ Tending to your Practice ॐ

November news is here, yogis!

Hope you are all well and experiencing a wonderful autumn with friends and family. Here in Dublin, the boys and myself just got home from a fun trip to Dingle. County Kerry is beyond expansive and wild, beautiful and scenic. The weather didn't stop us from driving along the Slea Head, and having a fun encounter with the ice-cream man. Read a short story about our trip to Dingle with some great photos, below.

Quick email for you about practice, the retreats lining up for 2023 and the abundant amount of yoga going on here in Dublin NOW and throughout THIS winter. Catch me here in Dublin or online and tend to your practice with disciplined daily focus under my watchful and careful care. Join me!

See you on the mat, yogi,

Sarah

2023 Yoga Retreat Events:

18-25 March - Yoga in Tenerife with Purple Valley

8-15 April: Ashtanga Family Retreat - Yoga in Salento

4-11 June: co-teaching in Portugal with Christine Hoar - Monte Velho (details on website coming soon!)

30 Sep-6 October: YogApulia Meditation and Ashtanga yoga

Email me any questions about retreats and prices - please ask me about a discount directly if needed; discounts will be offered at Yoga in Salento (April) and at YogApulia (October) for the yoga fees only.

Mysore Dublin: daily Practice at Little Bird

Almost a year now, yogis…been teaching since January of 2022 at Little Bird, and I have to share, I am grateful to Elena the manager and the owner, Eileen for offering me the chance to run a daily programme at their sweet shala.

If you’d like to drop in once in a while, I am welcoming new students: there is a beginner’s Mysore intensive the first week of January, stay tuned!

Schedule (same schedule for online):
Sundays Mysore 7:30-9:45 (note the time is a little earlier as we have to be out by 9:45)
M-Thursday Mysore 7-9 am (doors open 6:30)
Fridays Led Class: Pranayama with led to follow 7-9 am
Mondays: Chanting class 4 pm

Each Thursday from 9-9:30 am I am offering a FREE class online and in-studio; this is on a topic I feel students need a refresher about - could be Bhujapidasana, Utkatasana, a specific posture, or a whole vinyasa. Join me weekly in shala or online.

Here is the most recent Bhujapidasana short class, enjoy this quick workshop and try something new and add some spice to your Bhuja!

Zoom Class ID and passcode

All online classes are accessed through zoom

583 779 3991 with passcode Practice.

Click this link to access daily class

Co Kerry is full of Magic…

Heading to the west coast of Ireland used to be a haul, my friends tell me. Getting to County Kerry would take 7-hours to drive…now with newer roads, you can get there from Dublin in 4 hours. I keep traveling with the children to visit new treasures here in Ireland - this year alone I made it to Donegal and Galway…I have been to Cork and Wicklow, however there is still much, much more to see!

The fun story I want to share is how when we pulled over as we were leaving Dingle to go on just one more scenic walk along the sea to breathe in the air and take in the spirit of the wind…there pulling up beside us was the Murphy’s Ice Cream van. I thought, what is the ice-cream man doing at the beach?

So I asked him: his response was that he was there to fill his buckets up with sea water for their famous Sea Salt Ice cream. He was going to boil it down all day and the salt which remained he would put into their ice cream. As we watched the ice cream man fill his buckets, he shouted over the wind, “Head into town and tell them Niall sent you…you’ll get a free one!”

So off we went - back into town to get our ice cream. Calvin really enjoyed seeing where his ice cream came from. I loved witnessing how people offer something unique and special - right from the source all around us - here in Ireland it is easy, people are growing their own food and creating special recipes all around us: you just have to look for it. Have you bought local and Irish lately? Dubliners, head down to Exchequer Street - grab yourself a Murphy’s and let me know how the sea salt ice cream tastes to you! Out of-towners, send me something Irish that I may not know about to support.

Yoga Sūtra Corner

Join me for online Yoga Sūtra class - weekly at 4 pm. If you can’t attend it live, you can always send me an email and I’ll send you the recording.

What have you been reading lately? Well if you haven’t been reading your yoga philosophy, here I am to brush you up on two yoga sūtras that will inspire you to tend to your practice AND your prāṇāyama practice, too.

(Speaking of breathing practice - every Friday at 7 am I offer prāṇāyāma before led class. Please come to the breathing class even if you don’t stay for the led class, it is more important than you think!)

Patañjali writes in chapter 2 of the Yoga Sūtras, the Sādhana Pādaḥ about how and why we suffer: most likely we continually go through a repetitious cycle of suffering because we forget and mistake something inherently inside us - we lose our intuition, if you will. (It may be more complex than this - it could be hidden, or dormant, weak or strong - there is always something inside us that is ready to come out, we just have to present enough to witness it.)

This same thing happened to Hanuman! When the little monkey flew up to terrorise the sky and steal the sun (because he was a very naughty monkey and he thought the sun was a piece of fruit), Indra said to him,

”There is no way you are going to steal that sun and snatch it out of the sky! It is NOT a fruit! I’ll teach YOU a lesson!”

So he struck him down with a thunderbolt and Hanuman fell to the ground - this fall gave the son of Vayu his name, Hanuman, the one with the broken jaw. The fall also made him lose his powers and forget that he could fly, change shape, and with this massive fall, he no longer had the same powers - he no longer knew who he was.

He later found it through devotion to Ram - through his practice of kriya yoga…that is later in another story altogether…

You see what I mean - somewhere in our paths we forget who we are; woven into our makeup we are clean, bright, pure, conscious and free. Somewhere in our journey, Patañjali tells us that we make a series of mistakes that keep us in a pattern of not-knowing; perhaps it is our karma - past actions that keep us un-knowing our truest selves.

The yoga sūtras 2.4 and 2.5 tell us directly:

avidyā kṣetram uttareṣam prasupta tanu vicchinnodārāṇām

anityāśuci duḥkhānāṭmasu nitya śuci sukhātma khātir avidyā

From Edwin Bryant’s direct translations, the first one tell us that ignorance (avidyā) is the breeding ground of other kleśas (kliś - the root is to suffer), where they are in a dormant, weak intermittent or fully activated state.

Ignorance is the notion that takes the self, which is joyful, pure and eternal to be the non self, which is painful unclean and temporary.

ॐ

If we understand this philosophy, we can move forward in our regular daily practice and know - our daily invocation on the mat is about unwiring - taking off the veils that hold us in these constraints - to peel away the layers that keep us not-knowing. We are conscious individuals - we seek to be conscious and aware - and this is one of the keys to understanding yoga. Being mindful may just not be enough, yogis: we need to do more and become the vivekiṇaḥ - the yogi who knows that all is suffering and make ways (practices such as our daily asana, self studies, devotional practices - kriyā yoga) to manage this.

If we understand that we suffer because we remain in this state of identifying with our non-selves, and we make no changes, then there we will remain. Working towards knowing the self with clean looking, observation and practice - could well be one very important part of your daily practice - not just doing your kapotasana, but maybe looking why you did it and what led you to doing it in the first place, and lastly, how will it continue to help you stay more clear?

See you in chanting class, yogi!